Angel (18 page)

The sudden noise of the children brought Esmé to a window, one of the two highest at the front of the house. He pushed down the sash as far as it would go, and at the sound Angel looked up. He saw her standing at the open gate with a slip of paper in her hand. Her dog had already entered the garden and was roaming about among some clumps of ferns. Esmé knew that he had been seen and that it was too late to step back from the window as he instinctively wanted to: they made signs of recognition, she with a regal movement of her large hat and he by raising his hand in a tentative and even half-placating way. Then he turned from the window and looked at the untidy room. There was no time to put it to rights; his landlady was already directing Angel up the stairs and he went out to the landing to receive her. He could hear her harsh voice with its ugly accent, and remembered it so well from their one meeting. Sultan came first, scratching on the linoleum-covered stairs; then Angel appeared on the half-landing and smiled up at him—a remarkable smile, he thought: he could not know that it was compounded of relief after long waiting, and triumph, and love.

Her first impression of the room dismayed her, for she had never seen such squalor. No one in Volunteer Street would have left a greasy newspaper lying on the table. There were even a few dried-up chips left in it. That the nephew of a Lord—as she thought of Esmé—should do so, troubled her. He gave her a chair near the window and pulled on a velvet jacket over his shirt; then, as an additional gesture of hospitality and courtesy, he screwed up the crumpled newspaper and threw it under the table.

“I remembered you at once,” he said.

This seemed to her an extraordinarily superfluous remark, and she ignored it and called to Sultan to come away from sniffing at the newspaper on the floor. “Remains of my luncheon,” said Esmé without shame. It was years since Angel had eaten fish-and-chips from a shop, and she had sometimes secretly longed to do so again, but she gave a vague look of not understanding what he had said.

“Some days I have faggots for a change,” he added, trying to enlighten her. “Do tell me, how is my sister?”

“Nora is very happy and well,” said Angel, implying that she took the credit for this. “We are in London for the season.”

“Oh, me, too,” said Esmé.

“You once told me that you would show me your paintings. I have heard so much about them since then, from Nora and from my publisher's wife, that I am interested to see them for myself. You rebuked me for giving that Watts to the Norley Art Gallery, and I wonder if I could make amends by having them put one of yours alongside it.”

“They wouldn't,” said Esmé.

Her smile was enough to tell him that they would do as she bade them.

“You wouldn't like my sort of painting.”

She glanced round the room. Canvases were stacked facing the wall, some cobwebbed
to
the wall; the easel was empty; there were some brushes in a jar, and a dinner-plate which had been used as a palette was now heaped with cigarette-ends.

In one of her novels she had described an artist's studio, a room with a great north light, a daïs, a divan draped with brocades and velvets; there were lay figures and costly properties, exotic furnishings, leopard-skin rugs, burning incense, a profound silence. Esmé's room, with its two dusty windows, the street-voices coming through them, the torn linoleum on the floor, was a shock to her which she was finding difficult to overcome.

He went to the canvases and stooped over them secretly; a large spider ran out as he disturbed them. One or two he pulled out and studied intently with surprise or slow recognition. He muttered and pottered about for a while as if he had forgotten her.

“Well, it is all
your
idea,” he said at last, and he turned the easel towards her and set up a canvas on it. It was the picture of a level-crossing in a blurring, rainy dusk in winter. He saw her look of consternation, then her wary glance at him. Her reaction was masked until she could be sure that he was not fooling her. At first, she could think of no other reason for his having shown her the picture, so utterly unlovely it seemed to her. It depressed her as if she were really waiting there for those gates to open, one drizzling late-November afternoon. Then she saw that Esmé himself was looking at the painting without any signs of malice or disgust, and she wondered what she could say to him. Without waiting for her comments, he exchanged the level-crossing for some allotments. After some others, he put up a canvas brilliant with blue sea and sky, violet-shadowed white walls, red flowers. Just as, at last, she felt able to exclaim with pleasure, he took the canvas from the easel and said impatiently: “Italy. I can't paint in Italy. Too much colour.”

At the hated name, she said shakily: “Too banal a subject for
your
gift. I prefer you in England.”

“Oh, I am so glad. I couldn't imagine you liking all my dull colours, as Nora used to call them. So few people do.”

“I do,” she said firmly. “The level-crossing is my favourite.”

“And so it is mine. I showed it to you first to create a good impression.”

“I should like to buy it, if it is for sale.”

Esmé appeared to be considering this suggestion, which had never come up before. She watched him, going over his features as if she were learning them by heart, putting right what her memory had failed her in, dwelling in triumph on what she had remembered. He looked older; his face, beneath the eyes and about the mouth, was puffier than it had been—the marks of suffering, she thought, not of debauchery, as Nora would have had it. His delicacy and ease of movement, the frail look his too-long hair gave to him, touched her heart as desperately as at her first meeting with him.

He considered the picture. “Yes, I should think it is for sale,” he said doubtfully. He was not ready for her to ask its price, and was deeply worried that when she did he might say too much or too little.

“Would you consider three hundred pounds?” she asked, with thoughts of the Watts in her mind.

He had been wondering if he dared mention twenty pounds, and could not hide his stupefaction.

“Framed, of course,” she said smoothly, seeing his expression.

He was suspicious of the situation. At his first sight of her, he had known that he must keep his head and make no commitments; he had determined to be agreeable while she was there, get rid of her as soon as he could and then find some other lodgings. Her visit boded no good for him, he was sure, and if she was not acting as a spy for his uncle, she had come as an emissary from Nora, with tedious reminders of money owing. Her offer disrupted his smoothness of manner and upset his plans; he admired her for her strategy, but he mistrusted her even more deeply. He was not to be bought or caught.

“You can have it for two-fifty for all your kindness to Nora,” he said carelessly, managing to have his back to her as he said it. “But, of course, I should like that to be
entre nous
.” This was true, but not in its implication.

She had upset him to such an extent that he began to think it possible that she knew something about painting after all, and that there was perhaps more in his own than other people had been able to find. He stood back to look at the level-crossing, trying to take himself by surprise, but he could not.

He said: “I am glad you didn't like the Italian one.”

“There is something about Italy which brings out the vulgarity I suppose we all possess in some degree,” she said loftily; and he wondered if Nora had told her what an enormous fund of vulgarity had been discovered in himself, and decided that she had told it all.

“As a matter of fact, I have miserable associations in my mind with the very name of Italy,” she added truthfully. “The unhappiest thoughts. . . . I try to avoid speaking of the place.” She was not only seeking to protect herself from the pains of jealousy, but had shrewdly guessed that to banish Italy from their conversations would suit Esmé very well, too, and give him confidence in their relationship.

“What are your fees for portrait-painting?” she asked, when she had seen relief settle on his face. He is not very good at hiding his feelings, she thought.

“I don't paint them.”

“I wanted you to paint me.”

This time, he did manage to hide his feelings; his look of wistful regret was entirely feigned.

“It is a different genre,” he said. “If I were ever to attempt it, it would not be at your expense, you know. I would not have the world scorning me for blurring
your
features.”

“Some might think them better blurred,” she said playfully.

He looked at her gravely and wondered if there were not a monstrous authority of composition and of colour in the picture she made, sitting against the window, upright, her dog at her feet, the tawny animal against her snuff-coloured gown, the black hair built out to support her winged hat, one long white hand ungloved, encumbered with rings.

His landlady knocked on the door. In order to find out what was going on, she had been obliged to bring two cups of tea. “Such a hot day,” she said. “I had the kettle on for myself. Does Doggie want a drink?”

“He can share mine,” said Angel. Her look saw the woman to the door. She wanted Esmé to herself and no interruptions.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he said, considering her as he sipped his tea. At once, she bent down, set her saucer on the floor and filled it for Sultan. When this was done, she seemed at a loss. She was still flushed from the effects of his compliment and he thought that she could not have had many in her life. He was rather touched, and felt some power over her for the first time.

Before she left, the portrait was a settled project, and sittings had been arranged. She had been anxious to start them the very next day, but Esmé had the cheque to cash, then canvas to buy before he could begin.

“Then will you come to Lulworth Gardens tomorrow and see Nora and look through my wardrobe to choose what I shall wear for the portrait?”

“I want you in that dress, with the dog lying against it.”

“Is Sultan to be painted, too?” she asked excitedly. She was pleased at that, though disappointed that she was to wear so drab a dress. She had imagined herself in one of her low-cut evening gowns or with white lace to the throat, or even in what she confusedly thought of as a ‘Grecian toga'; but she recognised certain obstinacies in him and having won a victory or two she decided to bide her time about her clothes.

It was growing late and she stood up and tugged Sultan to his feet. She had such a store of treasures to go over on the long walk back, and felt a superstitious fear that too much delight was coming to her too quickly.

When she had gone, Esmé was able to examine the cheque that she had left on the table. She had made it out for three hundred pounds. He took another look at the painting of the level-crossing, then tucked it under his arm and ran downstairs, out into the cool, watered street, on his way to the framer's.

His landlady went up to collect the cups and have a glance round his room. The cheque had now blown on to the floor and she picked it up and examined it with astonished interest.

Nora and Esmé were reunited without enthusiasm on either side. She felt secure in Angel's protection: at least while she was there there could not be talk of Italy, therefore no mention would be made of his desertion, of money owing or jewellery sold. Forewarned as she had been by Angel, Nora could only be terse and sarcastic in a general way. “Is it really Esmé? I had quite forgotten what you looked like. And we are none of us any younger, I suppose.”

He glanced at her and agreed. He almost dared to say that her greying moustache gave her a military, a more distinguished air: his private smile at the thought he had withheld ruffled her as much.

“In all these years, I daresay nobody mended your clothes,” she added. As Angel moved uneasily as if about to interrupt, Nora said: “If you give me that jacket and Miss Deverell will excuse your shirt-sleeves, I will mend the pocket here and now.”

She hoped that she humiliated him by making him hand it over and display a crumpled shirt, stained in the armpits; then she hurried from the room, leaving him, she felt sure, to Angel's disdain.

But Angel was capable only of tenderness, which, far more than admiration and worship, can withstand a great deal: it can absorb disillusion and the day-by-day revelation of frailty, without becoming poisoned or attenuated. He sensed that he had begun well with her. At a time of exhaustion in him, she had appeared prophetically. He had so often taken the initiative in life, without the reserves to back up his actions; he was always withdrawing from absurd forays he should never have set out on. The emotions he had inspired in other people were not peaceful ones, adoration turned into contempt, desire to jealous anger. His life had been hindered by his beauty and the adventures it had permitted him. The adventures had all been expensive of money and of fortitude, and were beginning to be expensive of the beauty itself. Waking sometimes at the ebbing, hopeless time of dawn, he felt afraid of what he was doing with his life and where the life was leading him—my one life, he would think. He would shoulder dread away, turn over and wait for sleep. When the light was strong and the day really there at last, he felt his gay and careless self again. But since coming back to London, he had begun to suffer the moods of dejection during the day as well. In the late afternoons, the horror would swing over him, wherever he was, as long as he was alone. He would long for distraction. On the afternoon of Angel's visit, he had gone eagerly to the window when he heard the children come shouting down the street; it might be something to watch, a thief on the run, a procession, a dog-fight. Angel, looking up and seeing him at the window, could not know how well she had timed her call. Bored with sexual escapades, he began to take pleasure in an entirely new experience: an interest in personality. He had never found women mysterious, but monotonously, blatantly predatory. When he was with Angel, he was obliged to guess; one mystery led to another, she was endlessly involved in them. He began to wonder about her when she was not there, and was surprised to find himself doing so. That out-of-sight was out-of-mind with him had been a common plaint of other women he had known. He discovered that his speculations about Angel passed the time pleasantly. He had scarcely a friend in the world, had been so often obliged to cover his tracks, to make new beginnings; and escape from a woman entailed escape from her milieu; even where he might have done, he had not bothered to keep friendships in repair.